


And So We Burned

by disparity



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Chant of Light, Endgame, F/M, Mages and Templars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-15 00:06:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5764207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disparity/pseuds/disparity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She stands before the ruins of the chantry now, sword in hand as everyone left in the world that she loves awaits a decision, and even though there's no time, even though she's about to meet the battle of her life and she needs to prepare, she stares at the empty space as thoughts chase themselves around her head to the singsong tune of <i>you knew all along</i>.</p><p> <i>A pious aggressive/direct Hawke sides with the templars and is left to decide the fate of the mage she loved against all odds.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	And So We Burned

Sister, bully, protector, temptress, soldier, refugee, mercenary, lady, instigator, basalit-an, champion.

She has held many titles. Some fact, some facade, some of them laid upon her like accusations, burning her skin like the fire from her sister's hands. It was long ago, but she still remembers—it only took one burn.

Some say it was her sister who first fueled her contempt of mages, but that is a lie. It was a boy, a templar. His warm lips, rough hands, muttered prayers of repentance as he gave into the longing he'd so faithfully repressed. It took _ages_ to draw him in with her swaying hips and whispered promises, but give in he did, and _oh_ , it was worth every moment spent listening to that dreadfully boring Chant, every lecture, every lie she told him and her family and herself.

Hawke has always taken pride in the things she's earned, and she earned every groan of pleasure and remorse stolen from his sinful mouth. In the beginning, she was certain the day would come when she'd tire of her game, when she'd at last had her fill of rebellion. But as the months drifted past and she spent more and more time with priestesses and templars and the quiet peace she could ever only find within the chantry's walls, she found herself changing.

For years she'd been uprooted and forced to flee, for decades had she run with no end in sight, only brief rests that always ended, and it made her resilient, strong, hard. But _he_... He found softness in her. He peeled back layer after layer of her with nothing but kind words and gentle encouragement, and it took too long to realize that somewhere in between memorizing verses of the Chant to appease him and whispering plaintive prayers to the Maker when she was alone in the dark, she'd stopped lying.

_In the long hours of the night when hope has abandoned me, I will see the stars and know Your Light remains._

One day she returned from chantry services to see her mother's pale face on the doorstep of a house she still didn't call home, even after ten years, and never would. She knew the unthinkable had happened— _We have to leave now, Marian, or do you want the templars to come for your sister and father_ (no, not father, not anymore)—and even though her stomach dropped beneath her and she couldn't breathe, part of her was _relieved_ because no matter how many years she spent in Lothering, she still felt as though running was the only thing she knew how to do. 

But this time, remarkably, it had nothing to do with magic or templars.

She did not say goodbye. Hawke has never bothered with goodbyes. He was the first person in her life she _wanted_ to apologize to, without the threat of a black eye or bed with no supper, and still she disappeared without so much as a note. She left the Maker behind with him, and she marched into battle with her hard heart and the scowl she'd be famous for in the years to come. 

All her life she has been goaded into the role of protector, and despite her resistance and resentment, it is something she does well. She was not a soldier for long, but oh, how she adored it. Her heart found peace in the arms of the Maker, but it _sang_ in the heat of battle, blood of darkspawn spilling over her armor as she cleaved them in two. She was not guilted into remorse for the creatures slaughtered by her hand—she was _praised_ for the number of their foul corpses scattered at her feet. 

She said no prayers in those days, whispered or otherwise, and whenever an errant snippet of the Chant of Light crossed her mind, she seared it with her hatred. The hunger in her blood became a part of her, defined she more than any title could, and when there were no more darkspawn to fell, she turned her hatred on what was left. 

It was never Bethany's fault that she was born a mage, but that didn't stop her elder sister. She leveled blame and punishment for every imagined wrong. Oh, she was civil enough, if impatient and decidedly unsympathetic, but she'd always been that way. Bethany and Mother did not notice the change until her actions proved her no friend to mages. Mother tried to saddle her with guilt, as she's always done, but all of Hawke's uncertain edges had since been ground to smooth assurance, and the accusations slid from her shoulders instead of weighing her down. 

Her poor sister took everything with patience and understanding, and it only made Hawke angrier. Even when Bethany offered her forgiveness, Hawke told herself that it was a demon speaking with her sister's voice because no human could forgive what she had done. When the templars did finally come and haul her away to the Circle, Bethany's relief showed plainly on her face. She was just as tired of running. 

Hawke stopped blaming her sister a long time ago, but by then, she had seen enough of blood mages and demons to etch in stone the belief first formed by the words a prophet and solidified with the haunting image of her mother's face sewn onto a walking corpse. Mages cannot be free, not when they wield such devastating power. Even her sweet sister, who only ever asked for love and never demanded pity, could be tempted into such destruction. 

Destruction... like this. She stands before the ruins of the chantry now, sword in hand as everyone left in the world that she loves awaits a decision, and even though there's no time, even though she's about to meet the battle of her life and she needs to prepare, she stares at the empty space as thoughts chase themselves around her head to the singsong tune of _you knew all along_. 

 _And so we burned. We raised nations, we waged wars, we dreamed up false gods, great demons who could cross the Veil into the waking world, turned our devotion upon them, and forgot you._  

If is proof of the Maker's capacity for humor—or sadism—that she fell in love with a mage. An _abomination_. It did not happen easily. Indeed, she resisted at every turn. For each step she took away from him, he took two more away from her. It should not have been possible that two people so far apart could end up curled into each other's arms, beds, hearts, but in sharp defiance of all odds, they did. 

Even now, she's not quite sure how it happened. It started the night she limped into his clinic pale and bloody, and the Maker-forsaken mage that hated her abandoned everything he was doing to heal her wounds. Potions laid half-concocted on his worktable, but his nimble fingers hovered over her broken body as he gently poured healing energy into her. He was close enough that she saw the bruises beneath his eyes and wondered if he'd spent most of his night working on that asinine manifesto. Something warm pooled in her as surely as the magic, and she wasn't entirely sure it was disgust. 

Stubborn fool that she was, she tried to leave the moment his hands stopped glowing, and he pushed her back onto the cot with no trace of gentleness. He prodded her chest sharply and told her that she was _not_ leaving without an explanation, and for no earthly reason, she grabbed his chin and forced his mouth onto hers. 

She was weary and hurt and angry and _demented_ , but he must have been just as mad because he planted his hands firmly on either side of her and parted her lips with his tongue. She nipped lightly with her teeth and he groaned, and before she knew what was happening, cold air rushed in to fill the space he had occupied, and she was paralyzed on her small cot, blood pounding as his magic filled her limbs with lead. 

And the mage panted and ran his hands through limp blond hair and _stared_ at her. There was confusion and anger in his gaze, and oh yes, there was lust—and she couldn't move as he scrutinized her, couldn't punch him for it or cock her head and make some flippant remark or reach out and grab him for another kiss or just _run_ because Maker, she'd never seen anyone peel her apart with their eyes before.

Then he spoke and it made her wish he'd go back to staring because his words were equal parts lecture and confession. He told of how he hated her and ached for her, and she could say nothing. In a swell of passion, he said she'd either have to release him from this madness or send for the templars because he couldn't stand the torment anymore. 

She should've sent for the templars, foolish girl. Now look at this. _Look at it._ The passion that made her love him has wrought this. 

She heard him going on about justice and templars. _Everyone_ heard him, but they all turned a blind eye because of her. Even Fenris, Fenris who suffered at the hands of a cruel magister, Fenris who was betrayed by his own sister for the sake of magic—Fenris did not hand Anders over to the templars because Hawke urged him not to. Even if he never trusted Anders, he trusted _her_. They _all_ trusted her, and she let them down, along with the city that will have to see so much more death and more destruction before this nightmare is over. 

And what a nightmare. Blood mages, demons, _Meredith_. Yes, she counts Meredith among their ilk. She is only a misguided woman, but she is a _templar_ , and this is not what templars should be. 

 _Those who had sought to claim Heaven by violence destroyed it. What was Golden and pure turned black._  

Hawke is no priestess—she is too restless and too enamored with battle and bloodshed—but neither is she a stranger to the ways of the Maker. She does not pray to him the way others do, in righteous supplication, asking for the strength to be better, kinder, more obedient. She is a flawed woman, but she can do the Maker's will in the way a humbly robed servant cannot. Her prayers are for understanding, for the knowledge to make the best decision, the wisest one, without hatred muddling the waters as it has done for so many years.

Hatred ruled her for such a long time. But nothing can last forever, and as powerful as her hatred was, it ebbed over the years. Hawke realized she was _tired_ of being angry, and eventually her wandering footsteps led her to the imposing chantry doors. She dressed plainly and kept her head bowed—she was not quite so infamous then—and listened to soft voices repeating the Chant, discovering that she still remembered some her favorite verses. 

 _Though I bear scars beyond counting, nothing can break me except Your absence._  

To admit that something had broken inside Hawke would have unraveled her—so she did not. She allowed herself to grieve for things lost and was surprised to find tears on her cheeks. She surreptitiously brushed them away and excused herself, quietly walking the chantry halls. 

She did not even think of running into Sebastian until he approached her. She blinked suddenly, taking in her surroundings. He seemed concerned, and she spat out a vague lie about being very drunk and having no idea how she came to be in the chantry. She implied that she may have... _cavorted_ with one of the brothers, and even if Sebastian did not quite believe her, he colored slightly and dropped the subject.

Hawke attended the chantry more often in the following months, and to his credit, Sebastian did not appear to say a word about it to anyone. 

Then she became the Champion of Kirkwall, and suddenly it was much more difficult to hide herself in the chantry services. Her prayers continued, but her attendance declined. She regrets that now as the chantry lays in ruins, but even though she has spent far too long on it already, now is not the time for regret. 

Something painful pinches her chest as she turns to look at Anders. His back faces her. Shoulders hunched, head in his hands, looking for all the world like a man defeated, not one victorious. 

 _The demons appeared to the children of the earth in dreams and named themselves gods, demanding fealty._  

She knows Anders is gone. This is not the man she loved, the man who held her close at night and whispered sweet things in her ear even when they fought all day about templar this and mage that, even when they both knew they would never change their minds, would never agree. The arguments had grown worse these last months, as the tension between Meredith and Orsino mounted. More than once, Hawke had wondered how much of it was the demon and how much was stubborn, passionate, frustrating, gorgeous Anders. 

The demon that has done this to her beloved, and to the people of Kirkwall, must perish. No matter how much time she spends staring at the empty skyline or talking to whoever inhabits her lover's body just now—and she has _so little time—_ that will not change. Maker, how she wishes... 

 _I cannot see the path. Perhaps there is only abyss. Trembling, I step forward, in darkness enveloped._  

She turns again to Anders. He will not face her. He has explained and she has listened. They are words she has heard too many times to count, and they both know words will not convince her now. 

 _Though all before me is shadow, let the Maker be my guide._  

He made a choice long ago, one that sealed his fate. This is justice in the Maker's eyes, not in man's. Man can be twisted; man can err. Man can insist that vengeance is justice, and he can even convince himself, but the Maker will not falter. 

_I shall not be left to wander in the drifting roads of the Beyond._

Anders was a good man once, but she had not known him then. She had only known a man corrupted by a demon. And if she had loved him still, what could be said about the man before the making of this irrevocable mistake? 

 _For there is no darkness in the Maker's Light and nothing that he has wrought shall be lost._  

Hawke does not know much about forgiveness, and she cannot say whether Anders could ever achieve it. The Chant condemns anyone who has done these evil things, but then, it promises that the Maker will forgive his children if only they... No, foolish girl. Anders will never repent. 

 _I am not alone. Even as I stumble on the path with my eyes closed, yet I see the Light is here._  

Anders stiffens as she raises her blade. He does not deserve a merciful death, but he will have one. The Maker may never forgive him, but Hawke has never been as certain as the creator of all things. Perhaps she is not meant to be. 

The last verse she speaks aloud, voice unsteady, starting soft as a whisper and growing louder as the words spill from her lips, “Draw your last breath, my friend. Cross the Veil and the Fade and all the stars in the sky.” She finds courage, from where you and I may only guess, and finishes in a voice strong and clear, “Rest at the Maker's right hand, and be Forgiven.”

**Author's Note:**

> There were maybe four different things I wanted to write about: a pious Hawke that quoted verses of the Chant, Hawke that rivalmanced Anders, aggressive/direct warrior Hawke that thirsted for blood, and templar-aligned Hawke that executed Anders. Instead of doing the sensible thing and writing them all separately, I combined them, and this was the result. I originally intended to recombine of all these ideas in a new work titled "Of Blood and Faith" which went over the same events in this fic in a longer format, but then that all spiraled and became something else entirely. Now it features a templar Hawke, and this work stands on its own.
> 
> All the pretty poetry is quoted from known verses of the Chant of Light, and I cannot take credit. The title is taken from Threnodies 1:8. Any thoughts/criticisms of this Hawke or this work are welcome. Thanks for reading!
> 
> Also, there is now a podfic for this work, recorded by the lovely Mnemosynea! It's linked below.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [And So We Burned (Podfic)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6188257) by [therealmnemo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/therealmnemo/pseuds/therealmnemo)




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